Ten Tiny Breaths (Ten Tiny Breaths #1)

***

I stare at the clinic’s large oak doors. They contrast so greatly to the sterile white stucco exterior. Still, it’s a nice building.

My home for the next little while.

A tiny hand slips inside mine and I don’t recoil. “Don’t worry. It’s not so bad and, if you’re good, when you get out, we’ll go get ice cream,” Mia says with a somber face. She and Dan spent their time visiting Chicago’s zoos and parks while Storm stayed with me. Now, they’re here to see me off. She raises her free hand with two fingers held high. “Three scoops!”

Storm slides up behind her with Dan hanging onto her arm, laughing. “That’s right, Mia.” She winks at me.

“Ready?” Livie asks, hooking her arm through mine.

Inhaling deeply, I look at the place again. “It looks a little posh.”

“Don’t worry. I know a guy who knows a guy … who knows a guy.” Dan grins. For some reason, I don’t believe him. I have a feeling that Carter Reynolds’s manicured hands are somehow in the mix. Maybe I’m a buy one get one free offer for Stayner not curing his son in the first place. For once though, I don’t fight it.

Livie and I walk forward, our steps mirroring each other. “Thank you for doing this, Kacey,” she whispers, wiping away the tear that rolls down her cheek.

A man in a light blue uniform opens the door and reaches forward, offering to take my bag.

“I’ll call as often as they let me,” Livie calls out, giving my forearm one last squeeze before letting go.

I wink, putting on a brave face for her. “See you above water.”





Chapter Eighteen





I won’t survive this.

I can’t survive this.

All they want me to do is talk. Talk and talk and talk. About my feelings, my nightmares, the almost assault on Storm’s attacker, my dead parents, Jenny, Billy, Trent. Every time I shove it all back into that dark, cramped closet where it belongs, Dr. Stayner barges in and drags it back out like a madman on a mission, with me kicking and screaming as I hang onto his coattails.

None of this will help me.

Neither will the anti-anxiety meds. They make me feel tired and nauseous. Dr. Stayner tells me they take time to work.

I tell him I’m going to punch him in the face.

I hate his guts.

And when I close my eyes at night, Trent is there to greet me, laughing. Always laughing.

I tell that to Dr. Stayner one day in his office, during my daily private session. “Do you think he’s laughing, Kacey?” he asks.

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

“No, you told me you had a dream about him laughing at you. But do you believe that he’s laughing?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?”

I glare at him. This conversation has gone on far longer than I expected. This is what I get for opening my big mouth. Normally, I stay quiet and give simple “yes” and “no” answers. Those have worked well for me so far. I don’t know why I thought this would be an innocuous topic.

“Let’s think about this a moment, shall we, Kacey?” He leans back in his chair and he just sits there, watching me. Is he thinking about this? Does he think I’m thinking? This is unnerving. I let my focus roam around his office as a distraction from the awkwardness. It’s small and clinical. He has walls upon walls of books just like any normal shrink should have. But he’s not like any other shrink that I’ve met. I don’t know how to describe him. His voice, his mannerisms, they’re all unusual.

“Trent is a young college guy who drank too much one night—like most college students. Then he made a horrible, stupid mistake.”

My hands clench and I lean forward in my chair, imagining myself spurting acid from my teeth to melt Stayner’s skin. “Mistake?” I hiss. I hate that word. I hate when they use that word to describe that night. “My parents are dead.”

Dr. Stayner’s finger pokes the air. “That’s the result of his horrible, stupid mistake. That’s not his horrible, stupid mistake, though is it?” When I don’t answer, too busy glaring at the navy blue checker carpet on the ground, I feel something pelt my forehead. I look down to see a paperclip on my lap.

“Did you just throw a paperclip at me?” I ask with complete sincere shock.

“Answer the question.”

I grit my teeth.

“What was Trent’s horrible, stupid, life-altering mistake?” Dr. Stayner pushes.

“He drove home,” I grumble.

Another paperclip pelts my forehead as Dr. Stayner shakes his head frantically, his voice raising a notch. “No.”

“He gave his keys to his friend to drive home.”

“Bingo! He made a choice—in his inebriated state—a choice that he shouldn’t ever have made. A very bad and very dangerous choice. And when he sobered up, he learned that that choice killed six people.” There’s a long pause. “Put yourself in his shoes for moment, Kacey.”

“I will not—”

Dr. Stayner anticipates and cuts my objection off at the knee caps. “You’ve been drunk before, right?”

I purse my lips tightly.

“Haven’t you?”

A night flashes in my mind without much thought. Six months before the accident, Jenny and I went to a field party and got loaded off Jagger bombs. It was one of the most fun nights I’d ever had. The next morning was another story.

“That’s right,” Dr. Stayner continues as if he can read my mind. Maybe he can. Maybe he’s a super-freak quack. “You probably did a few stupid things, said a few stupid things.”

I nod begrudgingly.

“How drunk were you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I was … drunk.”

“Yes, but how drunk?”

I level him with a glower. “What is wrong with you?”

Again, he ignores me. “Would you have driven home?”

“Uh, no?”

“And why not?”

“Because I was fifteen at the time, genius!” My fingers are turning white now, gripping onto the chair handles so tightly.

“Right,” he waves his hand dismissively. But his point hasn’t been made apparently. “What about your friend? Friends? Exactly how drunk were they?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Drunk.”

“Was it easy to tell? Was it so obvious that they were drunk?”

I frown as I think back to Jenny dancing and singing on top of a picnic table to Hannah Montana. How drunk was she exactly, I have no clue. Jenny would do that dead sober. Finally I shrug, the memory bringing a painful lump to the back of my throat.

“What if, at the end of the night, that friend told you they had stopped drinking hours ago and could drive home? Would you believe them?”

“No,” I answer quickly.

That finger goes up again, waggling. “Think about that for a minute, now Kacey. We’ve all been there. Out for a good night, had a few drinks. You know you can’t drive, but do you automatically not trust anyone else? I’ve been there, myself.”

“Are you making excuses for drunk driving, Dr. Stayner?”

He’s shaking his head furiously. “Absolutely not, Kacey. There’s no excuse. Only terrible consequences that people have to live with for the rest of their lives when they make one stupid decision.”

We’re silent for a moment, the doctor no doubt still waiting for my answer.

I look at my hands. “I guess that could happen,” I begrudgingly admit. Yeah, thinking back, there may have been one or two times that I climbed into a car, assuming the driver was fine because they said so.

“Yes, it could.” Dr. Stayner nods knowingly. “And it did happen. To Cole.”

My rage ignites suddenly. “What the hell are you doing? Are you on his side?” I snap.

“I’m on no one’s side, Kacey.” His voice has changed to even and calm once again. “When I hear your story—the tragic accident—I can’t help but empathize with everyone involved. You. Your family. The boys who died because they didn’t do something as simple as buckle their seat belts. And Cole, the guy who handed someone his keys. When I hear his story, I feel—”

I storm out of Dr. Stayner’s office then, with his shouts of, “Empathy!” following me all the way down the hall, into my room, looking for ways to crawl into my soul and torment me.